[Wikipedia-l] A portal page for www.wikipedia.org (was Re: Why www.wikipedia.org => en.wikipedia.org ?)

Fri Jan 7 06:10:19 UTC 2005

Walter Vermeir a Ã©crit:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I want to know why the address
http://www.wikipedia.org redirects 
>> automatically to http://en.wikipedia.org... Is
Wikipedia an english 
>> project with translations, or is it a real
international project?
> 
> 
> I asked myself that same question many years ago. I
think I posted the 
> first question about this on some wikipedia list at
the end of 2001. 
> Always a lot of objections. It would break links,
English is the lingo 
> franca of the internet. At the time of the change
from wikipedia.com to 
> wikipedia.org used to a opportunity to do it but it
has not be done.
> 
> Wikipedia is a international project. But only the
English may use the 
> front entrance.

I was among those who objected more than 2 years ago.
I believe most of the objections raised at that time
do not make any more sense. A lot was written on the
mailing list, and some discussion may be found here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org.

I do not think there were be links broken now. We
switch the adress more than 2 years ago, the
encyclopedia is so much bigger now, and we had truely
become international (which was not true 3 years ago
at all).

It is high time we finally get a portal page. 

There were other solutions mentionned 2 years and a
half ago, but I think portal is the solution chosen
for all our projects, so best to stick with it
probably.

However, it might be nice to try to do something good
looking and not necessarily wiki (we do not need the
left menu for example).

I suggest that some people try to come up with some
good designs and that we get done with this. For
example, this might be a conceptual proposition
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org-mav%27s_Prop)
but it could need a graphist to polish it.

I hope someone come up with a good idea :-)

Could someone set up a contest page, where we could
add considerations to respect and where wikipedians
could link their proposal ?

Anthere

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